Illegal rooming houses persist in Quincy

QUINCY – A fire last Saturday in a duplex on Pleasant Street offered city officials a window into a problem that just won’t go away – illegal rooming houses.

Five people were living in one bedroom of an apartment with no smoke detectors when a cigarette left on a mattress sparked a fire in the wee hours of Saturday morning, spewing thick smoke from the second floor windows, firefighters and building inspectors said.

“It’s still out there,” Jay Duca, Quincy’s inspectional services director, said of illegal rooming houses. “We come across probably two per week of people living in a basement or an attic or something that’s never been legalized.”

Five days after the fire at 17 Pleasant St. – where there were no injuries to the residents – the windows were boarded up by six sheets of particle-board nailed into the red shingles.

The building’s owners, Yang Luo and Ellen Zhang, were cited once in 2009 for operating an illegal rooming house at the property but they started up again, Duca said.

“They are absentee landlords, and they were cited and fined,” added Duca.

The fines the city can assess aren’t much of a deterrent, though. Duca said the owners of the Pleasant Street home will have to pay a $300 fine. That fine can be assessed per day if property owners fail to comply with orders to vacate and dismantle illegal dwellings.

Fire damage at the Pleasant Street house was estimated at $75,000. Neither Luo nor Zhang returned phone calls made by the Ledger to the phone number listed for them on the Quincy Fire Department’s report.

Five years ago, after a fire on Robertson Street – in an illegal apartment without smoke detectors – killed a father and his two infant sons, Quincy started a special task force and began cracking down on illegal apartments.

But officials say the problem persists because it is deeply rooted in simple economics – greedy landlords taking advantage of tenants desperate for cheap rent no matter the cramped conditions and fire hazards.

“We inspect regularly, and our task force goes out and we respond to tips,” said Quincy Fire Chief Joseph Barron. “But there are people, it’s the profit motive, they know better but they are scoffing at the law.”

The risks are significant. Illegal rooming houses often lack proper egress in a fire, and people living in overcrowded rooms routinely use hotplates to cook, increasing the fire hazards, said Barron.

In some cases, city inspectors have pursued harsher criminal charges against landlords, cutting power to buildings and meeting with court officials to expedite compliance.

Carolyn Sheppard, the director of housing at Quincy Community Action Programs, said that at two events this year in the city aimed at educating tenants and landlords about their rights and responsibilities, several tenants talked to her about living in overcrowded apartments.

Many of the tenants who approached Sheppard were Asian, she said, but when she invited them to meet with her in her office on Hancock Street, none of them came.

Boston Chinese Neighborhood Center, a nonprofit agency that just opened a new office in North Quincy, is looking at the issue of overcrowding and unsafe housing.

“There are definitely people who would benefit from more education and civic engagement around living conditions and rights,” said Giles Li, the executive director of the social services agency. “It’s why we opened in Quincy.”

The problem of illegal rooming houses is not confined solely to the city’s recent immigrants, said city officials, but it is one dimension of the problem.

“We’ve got to continue to be vigilant on the issue because it’s putting people at risk,” said Mayor Thomas Koch.

Chris Burrell may be reached at cburrell@ledger.com or follow him on Twitter @Burrell_Ledger.

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